How much is your dead body worth?.

How Much is Your Dead Body Worth? looks at companies trading in body parts. In total, parts from a disarticulated body could reach US$250,000. The story starts in New York, USA, with the British broadcaster Alistair Cooke, who died in 2004 of lung cancer. What happened next became a body-snatching scandal. The history of body-snatching goes back 300 years, when so-called resurrectionists disinterred fresh corpses. Burke and Hare circumnavigated this and murdered 16 people before they were caught. This lead to the Anatomy Act of 1832 in the UK when a free supply of corpses was granted using bodies which were unclaimed or the next of kin were too poor to bury. These days, people opt to leave their bodies to medical science. A few tasteful cadaver shots are shown in an anatomist's laboratory. Next scenes are shown in the Wolfson Surgical Centre where pioneering surgery is taking place - on cadavers. This has only been possible since 2006 in the UK. The situation in the US is different, where there is a business model. A not-for-profit company AGR, Anatomy Gift Registry, cannot buy or sell cadavers but can charge service fees for separating body parts. To cover the costs of disarticulation, charges of USD$6000 per cadaver are levied. The demand is huge, particularly in tissue broking, a largely unregulated industry in the US. Demand is high and a case where a crematorium adopted a side-line in stealing body parts is described - including those of an AIDs patient, which is illegal. However, innovative and beneficial is surgery taking place; a knee operation using human tissue from a cadaver is shown. Other uses are described - in the US there are 1.5 million operations using human tissue. A body is shown being extensively sterilised, then first the skin is removed and the bones from the leg removed. The whole body can be disarticulated in minutes with just a scalpel. Another scandal in the US is described, where a disgraced surgeon set up a side-line in harvesting body parts. Stolen bones were replaced with plumbing parts - in evidence in an x-ray. We return to the story of Alistair Cooke. Cooke's daughter comments on the anguish facing patients' who received human tissue from the discredited organisations. For example, a man who received human tissue has been discovered to have Hepatitis B, most likely as a result of infected tissue. Unfortunately, these cases could damage the legitimate supply of body tissue. A cycle of corruption can be created as the potential profits soar. A touching memorial service is shown at a medical school in the US where students have the opportunity to give thanks to the families of past donors.